The rumor that this new coronavirus crossed over to humans in China by eating snakes sounds suspicious, and perhaps a little racist.[4] Predictably, the internet echo chamber has blown up with bigoted comments full of disgust at imagined Chinese eating habits. Old prejudices die hard. What we eat is weird to everyone but us. Southerners from Louisiana might love to suck the brain juices out of a super spicy crawfish, then shovel in a bite of black-eyed peas smothered in cornbread and mayonnaise, and finally chase it all down with a gulp of Tamarind Jarritos.[5] According to the Hebrew scriptures, they ate bread baked over excrement and spent a good amount of time eating “manna,” which was probably the gum resin of desert shrubs.[6] Americans may be repulsed by the idea of eating bats, but it isn’t clear why. We eat all kinds of mammals that are both smart and prone to disease. In truth, revulsion at the eating habits of other communities says far more about one’s own sense of group exceptionalism than it does about some objective notion of what-not-to-eat.